According to research reported by MIT's Sloan Review, the term 'ecosystem' occurs 13 times more frequently now than it did a decade ago. Now, we all know that buzzwords and jargon tend to get overused and aren't always included in the appropriate context. In the modern business lexicon, the word 'ecosystem' has been used to refer to support functions, product portfolios, service bundles (the list goes on). Behind these linguistic applications however, there is a bona-fide new phenomenon evolving in the marketplace. That is the rise of dynamic, multi-company (eco)systems that provide the foundation for new ways of doing business. These digital ecosystems are comprised of companies, people, data and processes that are connected by the shared use of and intersection between digital platforms. In building these ecosystems, businesses foster collaboration and provide mutually beneficial relationships between all parties involved. If it is true that mastering digital ecosystems are one of management's next frontiers, how can HR professionals take the lead on managing these ecosystems as part of the digital transformation of HR?

Management Guru Peter Drucker famously stated that culture eats strategy for breakfast. In a business environment where culture is more important than ever, developing your organisational culture is more than just having a set of values and a vision. Everyone in the business needs to live and breathe your culture and set the example. It needs to be part of everything you do, and it should act as a set of rules to help guide and empower your people with decision making. It is only when values are taken off the wall lived by all employees in word and action that you can say your organisation has a strong corporate culture. Reduced to its essence, culture = values x behaviour. In this week's HR Blog, we look at why it is important to ensure values and behaviours align, and culture is a lived experience not just a slogan.

The way we work is in constant flux. Old assumptions about the best way to work are being questioned. New ways of doing business are being tested against productivity measures, return on investment and benefit to employees. A hot topic at the moment is the four day work week, but will it work for everyone? The reality is that absenteeism is a major ongoing problem in Australia. The rate of absenteeism across the country continues to rise, with as much as 5% of the Australian workforce calls in sick on any given day. To put it another way, this means that in a company with 20 employees, there will be one absence every single day. An unexpected employee absence can cost a business as much as $340 a day, while the annual cost to the Australian economy of lost productivity through absenteeism is a staggering $33 billion, with a total of 92 million working days being lost through unexpected absences. Whether it is a sign of entitlement or burnout, the impact these levels of absenteeism have on business are significant and some businesses are trying different ways of working in an effort to transform this challenge.

If you've heard any of the news about the Financial Services Royal Commission, it is pretty clear that these businesses don't do a very good job of conveying and embedding mission-critical concepts (like ethical behaviour) into their organisation. Communicating the values of your business, and illustrating the culture of your organisation to both potential and actual employees is one thing. Ensuring that those values aren't just paid lip service, but become lived experiences at ALL levels within your organisation, is definitely business-critical in today's marketplace. If the interrogations and admissions of the Royal Commission are anything to go by, it is clear that there is such a wide gap between words and actions in business that something needs to be done. But what? Our last couple of Blog posts have focused on the importance of getting Onboarding right, and the untapped benefits of storytelling for hr. In this Blog, we will explore how you can use the power of story as part of your Onboarding process to set the right tone for the expectations your business has about 'how we do things around here.'

We're currently doing 2017 edits of some of our most popular Blog posts. Back in 2014 we published 'Key Concerns for HR Managers in an Organisational Restructure, and it still gets a significant number of views every month. However, the business landscape has shifted quite significantly in the last 3 years, so we figured it was time for an update. After all, as the disruption from AI, robotics and other upheaval transforms the way we work, having some sound restructure foundations to guide your process will become more essential than ever.

We've been going through a bit of a mid-year review and as I was looking at the metrics about our HR Blog, it became very clear that you - our audience, our community, has a very broad range of interest in all aspects of HR. One could make some pretty interesting assumptions about what HR Professionals are interested in learning about in order to stay on top of what is important to both business and employees in a rapidly changing workplace environment. As part of our reflection on the last financial year, we decided to put together a list of the top 10 Blog posts (based on popularity / readership) from the last 12 months.

Today we're really excited to share some news that we're quite proud of over here at Subscribe-HR. We received an email towards the end of last week telling us that we had been included on Feedspot's list of the GLOBAL (#58) Top 100 HR Blogs. Compiled by the team at Feedspot, the list was created by their team after an assessment of multiple factors (outined below). As an organisation that strives to provide authentic, quality content to our audience, we were pleasantly surprised when Feedspot contacted us.

Now that we’ve taken a deep dive into employee engagement and the enormous potential available through a commitment to facilitating such engagement, let’s take a look at the benefits this will produce for your customers. According to Gallup's  research, when organisations successfully engage both their customers AND their employees, they experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes. Yes, that is a zero after the 24, not a typo – 240%.